Isaiah 42:5-10a, Ephesians 3:14-21
I’ve heard the riddle many times before–in clergy gatherings where pastors are feeling cynical, from supposed church growth experts, from folks who have concluded they have outgrown the church. The play on words only makes sense if you’re familiar with the Good Friday tradition of preaching on “the seven last words of Jesus.”
Here’s how it goes: “What are the seven last words of the church?” Anyone want to hazard a guess?
The answer: “But we’ve always done it this way.” Get it? Seven words that, in the minds of the riddle-tellers, are the death of any church.
Usually, the telling of that riddle is followed by the telling of stories: about the congregation that practically came to blows when they changed the paint color in the sanctuary, about “worship wars” that erupt between different generations of church members over whose music will be used on Sunday mornings, about people leaving or refusing to sing or ousting pastors whenever change makes them uncomfortable.
The stories are extreme examples. Even so, they point to something that is true in every church: we have a complicated relationship with tradition.
Whether we are old historic churches or new church starts, at our center is the belief that the wisdom of ancient peoples–2000, 3000, even 4000 years ago–is relevant today. We follow a teacher who himself had a complicated relationship with tradition. Jesus was a faithful, practicing Jew who broke the rules about the sabbath. He caused a ruckus in the temple. He said things like, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
In our Hebrew Bible reading, we go back 2500 years to draw upon the ancient wisdom of the prophet Isaiah, who hears God say, “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare…” Then Isaiah calls the people to sing, not their old favorite hymns, but a new song. At the center of our tradition is an ancient call to make all things new.
We do have a complex relationship with tradition. That’s a good thing. In fact, it is a gift we have to offer the world. When we are at our best, when we wrestle honestly and openly with the balance between old and new, the church has a unique role to play in the wider society.
We live in a society that is acutely aware of how rigid adherence to tradition can constrain and even damage our souls. We have become disenchanted, for some very good reasons, with institutions that are often the keeper of traditions. Our ears are attuned to recognize even the slightest hint of hypocrisy. We have awakened to how many people have been vilified by traditional ways of interpreting our faith traditions. As we have begun to listen to voices that have previously been silenced, we are appropriately questioning the voices that have long been dominant.
At the same time, changing technologies have made casual connection easier, sometimes at the expense of deeper relationships. We can communicate with strangers halfway around the world, but might never speak with our neighbors. The abundance of choices can leave us dizzy and disoriented–so many things to keep us busy, so many news outlets to source our information, so many genres of music and so many options at the grocery store and on amazon prime.
There are many good things about the changes in our culture. Choice is good. Questioning is good. Honoring stories that have not been told is so good. Meeting people whose lives are different from ours is very, very good.
In the midst of all these good things, there is also, for many people, a sense of rootlessness. Membership in all sorts of organizations–religious, civic, social, even athletic–has decreased drastically over the last forty years. People of all ages and stages of life articulate a feeling of isolation, sometimes rising to the level of alienation and despair.
This sense of rootlessness has spawned creative efforts to grow new roots. Open Spirit is part of that response, emerging out of our recognition that people are searching for new ways to find depth and meaning.
In preparation for our fall worship season, which we are calling “A Celebration of Music and Ministry,” I identified one of the ministries of our church as “Honoring the Wisdom We Inherit.” I believe that we have a crucial role to play in the wider society, as a community that wrestles honestly and faithfully with ancient wisdom and new ideas. We don’t have easy answers. We do have insights to bring to the wider cultural conversation.
The starting point for our insights is the life and teachings of Jesus. Jesus did a new thing, not by rejecting tradition but by delving deeper into it. When he broke the rules-of-the-day about how to keep the sabbath, he challenged his disciples and his detractors to ask what the purpose of the sabbath really is.
Jesus urged a lawyer to move past the hundreds of complex customs and traditions people were struggling to keep, pointing him instead to the two great commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. These two laws, Jesus said, are at the heart of all those other rules. Then Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, a new story to challenge the lawyer to reclaim the ancient scriptural call to care for the stranger and sojourner.
Jesus did not abandon tradition; he peeled back the layers to get to the heart of the tradition, and in so doing opened the door for something new to emerge. That something new persisted beyond his death, as his disciples, enlivened by his resurrection and inspired by the Holy Spirit, formed communities that became the early church. As the house church in Ephesus tried to live this new way, the Apostle Paul prayed that they might be “rooted and grounded in love.” Through all their struggles about how to shape their community life, he prayed they would return to the heart of Jesus’ teachings, the root of the ancient biblical wisdom: love God, love your neighbor. “I pray,” he wrote, “that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
As Jesus’ followers, descendants of those early churches, we are called to be rooted and grounded in love as we rise up with new ways of living out our faith. This is the wisdom we bring to the wider cultural conversation about old and new, about alienation and connection. What we offer is not a rigid clinging to tradition for the sake of tradition, nor is it a flippant rejection of anything old. We offer an invitation to go deeper, to the heart of our familiar ways to claim the wisdom at their roots. We bear witness to the promise that, as we go deeper, we open ourselves to a wellspring of creativity within us. The deeper our roots, the more we can absorb nourishment we need to respond to today’s challenges in a new way.
We offer this witness primarily through our actions. We bear witness to ancient wisdom–that core commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves–when we make sandwiches and share worship with our friends at Worcester Fellowship. We bear witness to the enduring Hebrew Bible call to care for the stranger and sojourner as we prepare our parsonage for a family of Syrian refugees. When we ask people from Jewish, Baha’i, Buddhist and Quaker traditions to speak at an upcoming Open Spirit series about how their faith inspires courage for their work to heal our world, we invite all our neighbors to claim the nourishment that comes from their own deep roots.
One of the ways, this fall, we will bear witness to the relevance of inherited wisdom in today’s world is through a concert. On Saturday, November 2, we will host a concert as the culmination of this season of celebrating music. We will invite the wider community to hear our newly restored organ, to join us in honoring the people in the past who cared for this instrument and the people today who gave so it can offer a full, rich sound to celebrate the fullness and richness of God’s love.
With the glorious music of the organ, we will invite our neighbors to move deeper–to celebrate not just the instrument but the impetus behind it, the call to sing a new song, to make a joyful noise. As the organ reminds us of that ancient call, it also leads us back to today with a broader vision. There are many kinds of joyful noises with which to praise God. And so our concert will also feature bluegrass, jazz, piano and choral music. We will bear witness to the way honoring a traditional church instrument inspires new expressions of faith.
We also, in our concert, will bear witness to the power of love to shape community. Some of us find organ music deeply moving; others are more naturally inspired by jazz or bluegrass or a lively piano piece. We try to honor the wide range of ways we are moved in worship; in doing so, we invite one another to open ourselves to new experiences of the sacred. How might a jazz enthusiast experience the majesty of God through a classical organ piece? Can a traditional music lover awaken to the holy light-heartedness of bluegrass? In the diverse ways we make a joyful noise, we model an appreciation for each other that goes beyond taking turns to opening ourselves to be enriched by each other. We celebrate that we are rooted and grounded in love.
The final line of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians reminds us that, when we are rooted and grounded in love, when we wrestle honestly with how to bring the wisdom we inherit into the world in which we live, we rise up in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. “Now to the one,” Paul writes, “who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.” May it be so.